The one thing that comes through loud and clear in the complaint released yesterday (pdf) by Patrick Fitzgerald, and most of the news stories that drowned out practically all other news yesterday, is that Barack Obama comes out of the whole Rod Blagojevich mess smelling like a rose.

Obama is exonerated by Blagojevich’s own wiretapped rants. There’s this black-and-white statement quoted on page 8 of the complaint:

…Blagojevich said he knew that the President-elect wanted Senate Candidate 1 for the open seat but “they’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. [Expletive] them.”’’

Then there’s this potty-mouth diatribe:

…the FBI says it heard Blagojevich complain he has to give this “motherf***er [the president-elect] his senator. F*** him. For nothing? F*** him.”

None of this, however, stopped Mike McIntire and Jeff Zeleny of The New York Times, and Liz Sidoti of The Associated Press from propagating the absurd claim that Obama is somehow tarred by the Blagojevich developments.

Let’s have the pair of donkeys go first:

In a sequence of events that neatly captures the contradictions of Barack Obama’s rise through Illinois politics, a phone call he made three months ago to urge passage of a state ethics bill indirectly contributed to the downfall of a fellow Democrat he twice supported, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich.

Mr. Obama placed the call to his political mentor, Emil Jones Jr., president of the Illinois Senate. Mr. Jones was a critic of the legislation, which sought to curb the influence of money in politics, as was Mr. Blagojevich, who had vetoed it. But after the call from Mr. Obama, the Senate overrode the veto, prompting the governor to press state contractors for campaign contributions before the law’s restrictions could take effect on Jan. 1, prosecutors say.
[...]
Beyond the irony of its outcome, Mr. Obama’s unusual decision to inject himself into a statewide issue during the height of his presidential campaign was a reminder that despite his historic ascendancy to the White House, he has never quite escaped the murky and insular world of Illinois politics.

McIntire and Zeleny go on to build a nice little hit-and-run piece on that tenuous foundation. But let’s focus just on that opening argument. Pretty breathtaking, huh? If you work behind the scenes to help pass an ethics bill that will curb the influence of money in politics, that proves that you are knee-deep in the murky corruption you’re battling?

Personally, I’m at a loss to understand how such pure distilled garbage doesn’t lead to instant terminal separation from the world of journalism.

Liz Sidoti, by contrast, knows fully well she is peddling pure distilled garbage that she should be ashamed of peddling. So she tries to hide behind the fiction that she is performing the valuable public service of alerting us to the fact that Obama’s opponents will try to link him to the scandal. And while piously proclaiming that “Obama isn’t accused of anything” and “prosecutors were making no allegations that Obama was aware of any scheming”, she nevertheless manages to apply a a nice little layer of tar and feathers to Obama herself:

President-elect Barack Obama hasn’t even stepped into office and already a scandal is threatening to dog him.

Obama isn’t accused of anything. But the fact that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a fellow Democrat, has been charged with trying to sell Obama’s now-vacant Senate post gives political opponents an opening to try to link him to the scandal. A slew of questions remain. The investigation is still under way. And the ultimate impact on Obama is far from certain.

Those are her opening paragraphs. After that initial dose of innuendo, she goes on to pepper her article every few paragraphs with statements like “More details on the case could be forthcoming.” and “There were signs the continuing investigation could still involve Obama.”

Do stay tuned. This sounds very much like an opening salvo. If Liz Sidoti has anything to do with it, the Blagojevich scandal will continue to dog Obama. (Unless AP‘s editors suddenly come to their senses, and I wouldn’t exactly hold my breath waiting for that to happen.)